第170章 Chapter VI(34)

To enforce those truths upon the reason,to impress them upon the imagination,and to ensure a constant reference to them in all our conduct,must be the essential work of an authoritative church.Ward expatiates enthusiastically upon the ceaseless activity of the Church of Rome;upon the elaborate training of the priesthood;upon the catechising of children,the daily meditations,the constant practice of confession,and the various methods by which the church fixes the eyes of believers steadily upon spiritual realities.A church incapable of this can no longer be the salt of the earth,and,in fact,the Church of England,though it has boasted of being 'the poor man's church,'has been utterly blind to the 'accumulated mass of misery which has been gradually growing to a head for the last sixty years.'

'Through no agency of hers,'attention has been roused by such men as Lord Ashley;and yet the church has shown no symptoms of shame at such important neglect.(220)What else can you expect from the organ of the comfortable classes?

The social evils were serious enough.Dogmatic theology may not seem at first sight to be the most appropriate remedy;but,if it were,it certainly needed a better army of defenders.The ideal church must have a theological school,a body of trained teachers capable of meeting the assaults of unbelievers,of pointing out the true results of biblical criticism,of scientific and historical inquiries,and of defining the attitude of the church in regard to them.(221)Ward is awake to the growth of a new infidelity,more dangerous than that of the last century.Carlyle,Kant,Michelet,and Milman are mentioned as representing different manifestations of this evil spirit.

Strauss,too,is selling more rapidly than any foreign work.(222)Moreover,'Protestantism,'as he maintains,is utterly effete and unable to cope with the antagonist.The 'theory of private judgment'involves doubt,and will tend inevitably to 'Comte's philosophy.'(223)Comte was represented in England by Mill,who was accordingly the butt of Ward's sharpest attacks.

If Ward thus expresses the seminal principle of the movement,Newman was the most efficient leader.Newman,as he tells us in the Apologia,held three doctrines:first,the 'principle of dogma,'which was the 'fundamental principle'of the movement of 1833,and was the antithesis of 'liberalism';secondly,the principle,implied by this,of a 'visible church';and thirdly,the doctrine that the Pope was antichrist.(224)The last,of course,vanished;but the two others remained and only took a sharper form in his mind.The history of his thought is simply the history of his growing conviction that the true authority was that of Rome,not of the Anglican Church.(225)The 'principle of dogma'is equivalent to the statement that 'religion as an ere sentiment'was to him 'a dream and a mockery.'The liberal principle applied to theology means the substitution of vague feeling for definite truth.But to speak absolutely of a 'principle of authority'is to raise a difficulty.To believe in authority is to ground my belief on the belief of some one else.

Therefore the questions remain:why does the authority believe,and why should I accept its belief as authoritative?The Church must be competent to judge,and I must be able to judge of its competence.

The special answer given by Ward and Newman to these points gives their true position.First of all the dogmatists,agreeing so far with the liberals,were convinced that the ordinary opinions of the day led to infidelity or to complete scepticism.